In the bath tonight, I was thinking about this blog and about our trip last week and whether I was eager to describe it or eager to hold it in my heart. And, I'm a bit torn. Sometimes the telling of a true story diminishes the experience to the words used to tell it, takes the whole sights and sounds and smells and tastes and feelings of an experience and reduces them to sound bytes. (It's funny that fiction often does the opposite - unfolds a world with only words.) I really would hate to do that to such a nice holiday.
I will say that it really was nice. That I just love spending time with my own little family, unplugged from technology, exploring brand new places. That our puppy was brilliant on long car drives and steep hikes up mountainsides and along highway roads and in power failures and a train caboose. That perhaps the funniest moment was when we found a gluten- and dairy-free pudding-like dessert for our daughter, in a hippy-dippy co-op grocery store, and she later declared that its coconut milk/orange water/rice milk/roasted coconut flavour and texture was pretty much that of sunscreen. I had tasted it before and tasted it again after - and cracked up laughing because it was exactly sunscreen. A close second for funny was our visit to the state fair's demolition derby. Oh, and there was incredible beauty. And it was pretty much as good as going to Quebec (and if you know me, you know that's saying a lot).
I was thinking about things that should be held close, pondered in the heart, not spilled out for public consumption. I have a few ideas -- anything that happens in a master bedroom, undeveloped story ideas, other people's secrets, for instance -- but I'd like to hear your ideas. What do you hold close? What improves in the telling? What is diminished by sharing?
This is sort of a bummer response to a lovely post...
ReplyDeleteBut it made me think of sharing/putting into words our struggles and difficult feelings. Sharing them diminishes them, but in a good way! By sharing it the trouble is divided and the load is helped to be carried by the other person, whereas keeping it inside can allow it to grow to bigger than it actually is.
I struggle with this, as you know, regarding a digital story that is "too confessional" for wide public exposure. I also think FB has made us all more exhibtionist and narcissistic.
ReplyDeleteBut I found your travel tidbits charming.
so call me Hung Jury!
God's work in our lives. Often needs to be 'told in the congregation' but never comes across quite right. Definitely diminished in the telling, or so it seems to me the teller. But then it sometimes (often? always?) takes root and grows in someone else's heart and experience...and it was indeed right.
ReplyDeleteSara - Not a bummer at all. A good point. I think any of our 'dark side' is something that makes us feel isolated when we keep it in, expecting rejection when that rarely comes. We are freed by confession.
ReplyDelete